I Guess We’ve Got Nothing To Say
by anxiousgeek
Summary: SamWalter Harriman. The breakup...


_She said its not about you  
it's not about you, it's me  
She said it's not about you  
it's not about you, it's me_

_And sometimes its good  
sometimes its bad  
but living with you, well it's driving me mad  
And sometimes its good  
sometimes its bad  
but living with you is, well it's becomming a drag  
- Scouting For Girls _

She felt smothered. He was softening the blow.

She felt smothered. The past four months had been a nice return to normality. A return to the real world. She found life inside the mountain a little fantastical at times, dinner and dating had made her feel a little more in touch with life. It had been nice, an escape.

She had liked the attention too. At first. Walter Harriman was a hopeless romantic. He brought her flowers on the first date, and every date, and while most of them had died in her empty house, she remembered occasionally to bring some to work. Bright bunches of pink, yellow and red sitting in the corner of her lab. Something to make her smile and blush at any given time, batting away questions from her team.

He liked the news, she had leant that about him. And Davis was a an old nickname that had dogged him since school. Crazy Davis they had called him but he hadn't told her why. Too soon he'd said.

So she found herself reading the papers again, watching CNN, and discussing world politics again. He would listen too, when she told him it all felt pretty insignificant while the Goa'uld were such a serious threat. They debated it, debated everything. Sitting at her dining room table, arguing over morality and the meaning of life.

It had been a good feeling.

At first.

Now she just felt smothered. She found flowers in her lab, her quarters (she had found he could get into any room in the mountain but didn't know how), he gave her books, DVDs, but she found it all too much and the fact that he talked so much but said so little of himself grated her somewhat. Especially as he (and the rest of the mountain), knew a hell of a lot about her.

They really needed to have a talk, the lilies currently lying on her bed told her that, and they made her angry (what? Was she dying?!), and nasty. She wasn't a mean person, wasn't that person but this thing, or fling, with Walter was making her that person. He didn't deserve that because he was a nice guy, and they were friends, or had been before he had asked her out and she had kissed him on her front step in the porch light.

She hoped they could be friends again, though she knew it was hard to do that once you'd had sex with someone. Harder when it was bad sex, but that wouldn't be a problem with Walter. She thought they could be friends again.

He was softening the blow. Sam Carter was a beautiful woman, a little high maintenance maybe (but nothing he couldn't handle), and fun to be with. It wasn't working though. Not for him. The four month fling, as he was calling it, had been good, and it had started great, but he had this feeling it wasn't going to last much longer and that it would get nasty if it did.

Not that he had much of a temper, or that Sam could be nasty, but he didn't want to risk it. He still had to work with her, and he still wanted to be her friend.

So he was trying to carry on as normal for a couple of days, until he got the chance to talk to her. Little gifts, baskets and bouquets, though it occurred to him that he might be over compensating. His last two girlfriends had both suffered from allergies, so he'd never bought them flowers and Sam had confessed she liked them, the attention that came with them.

He had wondered when exactly he had become attracted to women who were an emotional mess. Though he knew the answer, so did his therapist. He had wanted to tell her the story about his mother, and her very public breakdown, how the nickname still followed him around today, with his name tag getting changed on his uniform regularly by someone (or someone's) in the mountain who knew the story.

It was hard to talk about.

They'd had fun, dinners, a picnic, sex, but she was getting frustrated with him and his heart wasn't in it. Which was the clincher really. He believed that if he was going to fall in love with the woman, any woman, he would've done so by now.

So, flowers on her bed. He'd considered writing that 'they needed to talk' on the card, but figured that would put her on alert. She was a genius after all (he'd seen her file, her IQ scores).

The flowers sat in her lab, in the one corner that wasn't full of electrical equipment that would fry under a vase of water. When he walked in, he closed the door behind him and she kissed him on the lips, thanking him for the flowers (he could get rid of security tapes too).

"We need to talk Sam."

"We need to talk Walt."

They spoke together, they voices mixing and Sam smiled.

"Ladies first."

"No, please, what did you want to say?" She urged.

"I don't think we should see each other anymore."

"Oh."

For some reason, he had expected her to shout or get angry but she just stared at him for a moment, then smiled again. He didn't know her as well as he thought, he guessed, which may have been part of the problem.

Before he could find the words to try and explain himself (even though he'd planned it all out beforehand), she spoke.

"I agree with you," she sighed, "it's not working is it?"

"Not really." He paused. "You were frustrated."

"You were frustrated."

They spoke together again and laughed. For a moment she thought maybe they could make it work but he didn't give her much chance to contemplate it.

"Guess there's not a lot more to say."

"No."

It was probably the easiest and best break-up she'd been through. Which was sad really but it didn't mean that later she wouldn't look at the lilies in the corner and cry, knowing he would get the tape of her crying and destroy it. She wondered if he would cry, even though it was for the best and what they both wanted.

"Still friends though?" He asked. She nodded, thinking about crying made her want to cry, and he pointed at her, two fingers like guns and she smiled. "Good." He hugged her tightly, and left her lab. Once the door was closed behind him, he had to take off his glasses to wipe away tears on the lenses.


End file.
